Bad Piggies iOS review

I don’t much envy Rovio. Tasked with following up Angry Birds (no offense, Amazing Alex) would be enough to make the average man vomit and/or cower in a cupboard.

Fortunately, Rovio is clearly staffed by waaaaay above average men, as Bad Piggies is every bit as good as Angry Birds, if not better. I freakin’ love it.

Bad Piggies takes the evil green pigs from the Angry Birds games, and throws them firmly into the spotlight. While Angry Birds is all about smashing stuff, Bad Piggies is all about building.

The action primarily takes places across 72 Bad Piggies levels (with an additional 18 bonus thingies), and the aim is essentially to get from A to B using a fixed number of components.

With said components, you can build, well, whatever the hell you like. It’s entirely up to you how you get from A to B, and experimentation is very much encouraged.

Needless to say, Bad Piggies offers three stars in each level, however it’s often necessary to attack the level in different ways in order to tick off each star. All part of the genius.

A star might be awarded for, say, picking up the star box (usually situated in a suitably awkward location, gah), beating a target time, or not using a particular component.

There are a good 20-odd components in Bad Piggies, each with its own unique attributes, including boxes (which define the shape of your vehicle), various wheels, springs, TNT, balloons, umbrellas, propellers, fans, rockets and wings. Phew.

In addition to those 72 levels, there’s also a sandbox mode, with four landscapes inviting you to use any and all Bad Piggies components you’ve unlocked (by playing through the core game).

And that’s Bad Piggies. While the get-from-A-to-B concept is remarkably simple, it is in fact a wonderfully deep game, and it doesn’t spoon-feed. You’re mostly left to figure out what each component does for yourself.

By the end of Bad Piggies, you’ll have leapt off ramps, run loop-the-loops, flown (you’ll never forget your first flight), and trashed a countless number of creations. It’s absolutely glorious.

My solitary gripe is that there’s a tiny lack of consistency. A rickety wooden plane might disintegrate on the runway on its maiden voyage (hilarious), but on a subsequent attempt it might successfully reach the goal. What the…?

Otherwise, Bad Piggies is sublime. It’s 69p for iDevices, £1.99 for the HD version, and free – yes, free! – for Android. You need to play it. I insist.

Pros

72+18 levels

Sandbox mode

Loads of components

Doesn’t spoon-feed

The little tune

Cons

Can we have more levels please?

The randomness thingy

Too complex for kids

Summary: With Bad Piggies, we have a new contender for Best Mobile Game Ever. Build, experiment, drive, fly, crash, explode. Genuinely superb.